Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 round-up: the best choice for 4K and VR

Sixteen GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 graphics cards tested

By Tomas HochstenbachFriday 10 February 2017 04:59

Introduction

There's plenty to choose from if you're looking for a new graphics card. In a span of two months no less than five new 3D chips were released. The first two were the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 introduced by Nvidia. We tested five variants of both of those chips, which means we can answer the question: which GeForce GTX 1070/1080 should you buy?

You can read all about the new top cards from Nvidia in our earlier reviews. In short, both are based on the same GP104 GPU from the Pascal generation, which features 2560 shader units when fully enabled. Pascal is basically the same as last generation’s Maxwell, but on a smaller manufacturing process. Much higher clock speeds are possible thanks to the jump from 28 to 16 nm and the application of FinFET transistors.

There have also been some needed changes in the architecture and functionality of the cards. Simultaneous Multi-Projection makes it possible to calculate an image from different angles, which is very important for multi-monitor configurations and of course virtual reality. Pascal also supports DisplayPort 1.4, which in turn means support for monitors that combine high resolutions with high refresh rates and even HDR.